Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Even though we are not affected by hurricane in our country here, we have experienced a few days of dark clouds, heavy continuous rains over here. As I am typing this, the sky has darkened and it looks like we will have another cool rainy evening tonight :)

I made another dollhouse miniature pink rainbow cake the other day, and had it made slightly different, if you noticed...

I like this new one too, with the white cream in between the pink layers.

Photo taken during one of the cloudy days...

With the weather a little more wet these days, it requires more patience working with air dry clay. Every little step requires patience.

I hope you like it! I will also be making another piece and that will be made into a class workshop too. For those who are interested to learn how to make this English Tea Cart Trolley cart, do look out for it!

Then a few days ago, a sweet customer approached me to commission some food jewelry - mauve macaron ring. She showed me a photo with the most breath-taking mauve colour I've ever seen, and I jumped right into it, making her a mauve macaron ring! Because I'm so inspired, I will make the whole range of macaron rings from that photo.

Can't wait to dive right into it, but first I have to finish some pending work...

Monday, August 15, 2011

It was a fun experience for me last weekend. A big thank you to Cindy who invited Stephanie and myself to be a "Judge" for the Bear Fruit Miniatures Workshop which she was the mentor. I've never been a judge before, so the term itself was a little scary. But all in all, it was fun and not stressful! I was extremely impressed with the quality of the work done by the participants, given that most of them have never touched air dry clay before. I hope whatever I said makes sense and the participants felt it was helpful. I didn't prepare a speech, everything was impromptu. I hope everyone would continue to experiment and more importantly enjoy and have fun playing. It was also nice to catch up with Cindy and Stephanie after the event. :)

Yesterday I continued working on my work in progress which has been sitting around for a while. I made the window shutters and I painted it green. I love this shade of green. It's just kind of different. It's actually a combination of several colours but I'm glad it turned out looking nice. It's a little antique actually.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

It's extremely rare (at least for us in Asia Pacific) to be on Etsy Front Page while we are still awake... Maybe this doesn't happen to most, but I was never awake for the few times I was ever on Front Page. :P

Friday, August 12, 2011

While happily making a bunch of flowers, some end up looking like roses and some were more like carnations. I picked the ones which looked like roses and made them into dollhouse miniaturespink rose cupcakes.

I especially love how delicate and thin the flowers look, just like the real thing.

This experiment on dollhouse miniature roses and carnations has been extremely fruitful and in a way, deepened my knowledge on air dry clay.

In fact, I was chatting with my friend today about how I would REALLY love to try my hands on making edible roses decoration for real cakes, maybe using gum paste. Now, what prompted me to want to try it out is because I wanted to see if my own unconventional way of working on roses and carnations could be adapted to the real edible thing. I've not tried handling gum paste, and don't know how the texture is like, but I think I would really like to experiment my rose/carnation making techniques with the real thing someday. Can any real bakers in Singapore who is reading this, and who's interested to get together to play with gum paste leave me a message? All the ones I know who bakes live overseas. This will be on my wish list.

Now, this is open to all the 1:6 scale doll collectors. Simply blog about this new unique giveaway with a clear photo of your empty flower pot, utensil or container that you would like me to fill it in with my newly created flowers. You can blog about why you like it to be filled with my hand created flowers, your preferred color ;) Please provide measurements of your empty container.

Then leave me a comment here on my blog, with your blog URL.

I'll be selecting one unique container and I'll make you a pot of flowers. All you have to do is to ship me your empty pot/utensil/gear. All you have to pay is for the actual shipping of flowers back to you.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Thanks to all who had responded to my blog post yesterday, and letting me know your thoughts about what you think of the flower - I love all the comments and hearing whether you thought it was a carnation or a rose.

Thanks so much!

So I made a whole bunch of them yesterday and when I had enough, I quickly assembled one into a small pot of flowers.

I'm still in the midst of experimenting and tweaking. Some turn out looking more like roses, and some turn out looking like carnations. At least they look like flowers ~~ :D

I'm still having fun with them, so I think I'll be making them for a bit.

Friday, August 5, 2011

This time, I wanted to write about another Japanese craft book - Sweets Decorina

Published in 2008, this is a 63 pages full coloured book. Though the book is entirely in Japanese, it is packed with photos, so one will be able to follow easily.

This Japanese craft book is suitable for beginners who wish to explore japanese air dry clay such as hearty, grace, cosmos clay. What I love about this book is that most of the tools used are inexpensive and can be easily purchased at Daiso stores. You can follow the photos provided in the book to scout for tools and materials accordingly. Note again that this book shows techniques to make 1/3 miniature scale or larger scale items. But you can experiment and tweak techniques accordingly to make other scale items.

What I also like is that they show you how to achieve different coloured clay such as orche coloured clay by mixing different types of coloured clay. This is especially useful if you don't have an whole array of acrylic paints lying around. They show you how you can achieve different realistic food tones with the primary colours.

You also get to learn how to make macarons and ice-cream using inexpensive tools.

If you are wondering what is the difference between this and the earlier air dry clay book which comes with a DVD which I have reviewed, I would say this has more different food items, which includes chocolate chip cookies, swiss roll, swan puff/profiteroles, various food toppings. They also have lots of photos to show how you can use these food items to decorate photo frames, clothes hanger etc.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Coloring books were a big part of my childhood memories. In my days when we don't have computers, and when Barbie dolls were considered a luxury toy, you have to find some other hobbies, activities to indulge. I still remember coloring books though. They were my favourite! Give me a coloring book and color pencils anytime. I enjoyed going to the bookstore and flipping through coloring books, and I do get to buy one sometimes.

As I got older as a kid, I still like coloring books, but I was looking out for more "challenging" pictures to color. There were 2 main considerations for me. The theme of the coloring book has to be something I like. I don't enjoy coloring something I don't have an interest in, like robots, or cars...things like that, you know. So I do flip the pages and see if there are things I like to color. If the subject is not to my liking, I won't be buying it most likely. If it is a feminine theme, that's a big plus point for me. :) Secondly, I love details, the more the merrier!

The Japanese coloring books were my all time favorite as they were the most detailed one I've ever come across, and the theme were definitely feminine and elegant! They make the best coloring books.

Even the front covers were so attractive!

In the past, they produced coloring books in the form of drawing blocks. So the picture was even larger, and equally detailed. It was NOT possible to finish coloring 1 picture in an hour due to the level of detail of each picture. The amount of roses and flowers in the picture alone...well you can spend a lot of time just carefully coloring away...Plus these were not designed for crayons. Only color pencils would be able to do the job nicely and properly :)

Come to think of it, there is educational value in coloring books. It instills discipline and a child has to be able to sit still for quite a while to complete a picture. Besides creativity skills, the kid would have to learn to control her motor skills, ensuring her coloring doesn't go "out of line".

This particular one showcases fashion wear from the 1700s to 1900s. As you flip through the pages, you get to see how fashion has evolved over the years.

It is not surprising that even adults love coloring books. I suppose coloring books are a woman's thing. ;) correct me if I'm wrong. Finding suitable coloring books for adults can be a challenge. I think these are just perfect!

My mom bought me similar coloring books when I was young but she didn't let me color on them as I was a little too young. It was not until I was 8 yrs old or more (slow developer... :P) that I get to appreciate such fine details and challenging pictures. Not wanting to "spoil" the original pictures, I tried tracing them. Boy, that was so much hard work that I gave up after a while lol.

During my time, there were no photo copying machines yet!

I know these would be perfect for adults who are still into coloring books. They would also make a nice gift for little girls!

They are now available on my store! Look under Coloring Books. I hope you have fun with them as much as I do!

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

I just had this vision of planting a fuchsia gerbera daisy into this planter because I think the colour would be so bright and pretty. Most people might turn away from fuchsia because it's not easy to match such a bold colour - but if it's used properly, it can create such amazing results. I like this combination. I hope it brings a smile to your face!